F.R.E.D. 2883 Website

[F.R.E.D. Girl]

Here is the link for Team 2883 a.k.a. F.R.E.D.'s team website.
(Formerly known as The Fighting Rednecks)


http://techcull.com/homepage.cfm


Comment back please! I'd like to know what people think of it and how to improve on it for next year.

[keehun]

Hello another Minnesota Team!

The first thing I would do is make the typography consistent, and display the blog-like entries not in a text box, but just make it a text

Otherwise, my question is, why are you using ColdFusion? What kind of complex data are you pulling from a database server that would require $1,300 software? The site seems to be mostly of static content, so this is where I'm curious about.

I'll be happy to help more, but first gotta take care of why you chose ColdFusion, because I am puzzled.
Otherwise, keep working on it! It's a great start.

Keehun
Team 2502

[basicxman]

A great start to a website... I'm glad you're using div's for website layout and not tables. Is there going to be a logo in the large blank area at the top? I'd also re-position your hit counter to the bottom footer area (and centered). As said by keehun I would rethink your approach to typography. Keep the fonts generally the same, and make a standard design for headers, paragraphs, etc...

Please please please switch from ColdFusion to XHTML format (please??).

I'm not exactly a fan of the content paragraph boxes center. Why are you using textarea boxes? It really clashes with your design and people can accidentally delete the text inside from their view.

I do like the logo on the side right by the top <hr>. The main text header should probably be done with an image editor as you can smooth out the text and have a wider variety of fonts to choose from. You should be keeping the same top area with logo, menu, and header the same on each page. The <title> tag might also want to be changed for each page too. I would rethink your design approach to the Bios page.

Your robot page is more so a "Game" page on this year's challenge rather then your robot. I'd change the titles accordingly. An external gallery is fine but you might want to consider transferring the photos, I forget if Picasa offers an API but you could look into that to display the photo's dynamically with some PHP or Javascript. Or look into embedding the gallery, even if it takes an iFrame.

On the calendar page I would recommend using CSS to style the Google Calendar as it severely clashes with your design.

This is for your about us page, imagine a center vertical line going down your page, in the absolute center. Centered text should be centered relative to this line, not the div. If you look at the about us page, each area of text has a different center point. The centered paragraph "pyramid" style is also a little outdated (but still looks good don't worry).

I believe there is a black background version of the FIRST logo, I'd recommend switching to that version on your Links page. View FIRST logos here, http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles...or_rev_rgb.jpg. On your links page the menu is bolded as About Us, I'd fix that to bold Links page.

I'd also recommend switching the background colour from pure black to a darker gray, such as #333333, although that would conflict with the FIRST logo as well on your links page.

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Sorry if I came off a little harsh, great start to a website, content is fine. If you would like some assistance I would be happy to help you.

[keehun]

Originally Posted by basicxman

Please please please switch from ColdFusion to XHTML format (please??).

Not to be harsh but there are so many things inherently wrong with that statement

For future reference, XHTML is a markup language, and ColdFusion is not a markup language and therefore you can not tell to abandon one and use the other.

For a second future reference, he is using XHTML as his Doctype.

[basicxman]

I meant rather than ColdFusion pages switch to .html with XHTML markup (I'm assuming you can change the Dreamweaver setup?). Sorry for the confusion.

[keehun]

Before we tell her not to use CFM, I guess I would have to ask FRED Girl, what part of CFM are you utilizing?

[F.R.E.D. Girl]

well i thought i was gunna need coldfusion but after thinking about what you guys posted and what i was considering before i think i'm going to change it all to html... as for our journals it was the best i could come up with since i didn't want it to take up a lot of room so people would get bored and not finish reading it all the way through.. so do you have any suggestions besides the text area boxes? the reason i used the white FIRST logo was so you could see it better because the black didn't match the black i was using very well i didn't think so at least.. does it look that bad? i did move the hit counter tho.. and keehun i'm not entirely sure what you mean by typography? and basicxman i'm not sure what you mean by the header and the pictures were taking up to much space and the pages wouldn't load quickly... is there another way to set that up? also the calendar i couldn't figure out how to make one with css because it would never work out

but no not harsh at all.. i just wanted input from outside sources.. thanks!

[basicxman]

Originally Posted by F.R.E.D. Girl

well i thought i was gunna need coldfusion but after thinking about what you guys posted and what i was considering before i think i'm going to change it all to html... as for our journals it was the best i could come up with since i didn't want it to take up a lot of room so people would get bored and not finish reading it all the way through.. so do you have any suggestions besides the text area boxes? the reason i used the white FIRST logo was so you could see it better because the black didn't match the black i was using very well i didn't think so at least.. does it look that bad? i did move the hit counter tho.. and keehun i'm not entirely sure what you mean by typography? and basicxman i'm not sure what you mean by the header and the pictures were taking up to much space and the pages wouldn't load quickly... is there another way to set that up? also the calendar i couldn't figure out how to make one with css because it would never work out

but no not harsh at all.. i just wanted input from outside sources.. thanks!

Fair enough! For each year of web development your critique gets harder and harder (on my part!). No the FIRST logo doesn't look too bad. I'm using Firefox 3.1b3 and the hit counter is in the same place...?

Please see this wiki article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography

[F.R.E.D. Girl]

oh i haven't uploaded the fixed pages because i ran out of time.. plus it was just a kinda depressing day today so i didn't really have time to fix anything that i wanted to... but yeah i don't know i wouldn't know i guess if the critique gets harder because i've never made a website really before this.. i've worked a lot with html tho so i said i'd give it a try